welcome back to the lead the national lead now by most accounts almost all of
the people protesting against the hateful bigots the Nazis and Klansmen
and Charlotte's Ville were peaceful but not all of them in their midst was a
sometimes very violent group of protesters that call themselves Anti Fog
known to not only clash with bigots but also sometimes with police and
occasionally storefronts at least two journalists in Virginia were assaulted
by violent counter protesters over the weekend including
this cameraman from the Richmond CBS affiliate CNN Sara Ganim now takes us
inside an T file and shows us this group like you've never seen it before it's
6:00 a.m. in Portland Oregon and we're headed to a bar with blacked-out windows
they wanted to meet us really early in the morning because they're concerned
about a lot of people being around we are meeting members of the Rove city
an tyfa short for anti-fascist this group's main goal is to disrupt
neo-nazis and white supremacist but also take on government and capitalism antifa
is any group that's willing to stand up against fascist by any means necessary
by any means necessary they say can mean outing a white nationalist at their work
or to their neighbors or as we've seen recently violent fires property damage
hand-to-hand combat at protests across the country explain to me the reasoning
behind fighting you have to make it so unpalatable to be doing white
supremacist organizing that they no longer want to do that and historically
that's what's worked you have to put your body in the way and you have to
make it speak in a language that they understand and sometimes that is
violence there's no firm number on how many an sefa activists there are in the
u.s. because there isn't any one organization most are local groups that
recruit and communicate through social media but experts who track these
organizations say their membership is growing in response to the rise of white
national groups and the election of President Donald Trump
violence and property destruction led to more than 200 arrests in Washington DC
on inauguration prosecutors say they were wearing that covered head to toe in
black tactics against khakha West look people dress in black locks for a few
things one Scott Crow has been leading in our case and militant leftist groups
for decades so people put on the masks so that we can all become anonymous and
then therefore we are able to move more freely and do what we need to do whether
it is illegal or not so some people will push back on that and say that the black
bloc is to keep people from being identified and arrested when they break
the law when they commit crime right it's a good way to avoid the
ramifications of law enforcement we saw that firsthand at a May Day protest in
New York City when you cover our face we pause and cover the Nazis will try to
find out who we are and that is a very bad thing because they harass people
when they organize they kill people they've hurt people they bite people
and we're the ones who are fighting back they are the second coming of Hitler
police in Berkeley told us they haven't seen this kind of destruction since the
1960s law enforcement in other cities are dealing with similar situation like
in Portland Oregon where an sefa had been involved in at least 10 a protest
ending in violence according to police and it's wearing on the community it is
new it's like this Rumble mentality of I'm going to bring my friends you bring
your friends and we're going to fight it out in the park it's not something we've
seen here it's not good for the city people are just frustrated by it
it's affecting their livability it's affecting their business has it become
more violent it happens quicker the fire-starting that we saw on May Day is
something we haven't really seen much of in the past the running through the
street breaking windows and everything in sight we haven't seen it as
consistently as we've seen in the last eight months but it's the violence
that's gotten them attention directly confronting groups that preach what
nationalists rhetoric like on inauguration day when
white nationalist Richard Spencer was punched in the face and it was the
antifoam movement that caused Berkeley to cancel speeches by extreme-right
provocateurs like Milo he innopolis if there are the more hardcore elements the
white supremacist and their Nazis to go to these rallies that are itching for a
fight we're there to say we'll stand in your way
the thing is Jake that experts who have talked to say that the antipholus may
end up actually hurting their Cod across the country people who are dressing in
black bloc are getting arrested authorities are taking this seriously
but that's not stopping them at all they have been telling me that they believe
that this tactic is working one of the interesting things that I found in doing
this reporting which really surprised me is that we found that a lot of these new
antifoam members they're young people disenfranchised young people who felt
that they were let down by both parties after the election and this is where
they ended up Jake